Lanterns and Gloves
by MochaCocaFan
Summary: Something I spat out, after chewing on. The medieval planets have to be conquered eventually.


Thou-Shalt-Repent-For-Thy-Sins Good glared briefly at Chastity Torah. He raised his oily, paint-coated hands up, shrugging wildly at her. "Sorry, just got the order this morning. Everyone who ain't married. Terribly sorry." Her anger deflated at his look of apology. She liked Chastity; he let her sit in the art studio and spin on her toes so long as she broke nothing and didn't tell anyone what he said in there.

She sighed, letting the breath she'd caught out of her mouth and regretting the taste it left behind, and sat on the wooden stool. Considering she was ugly—_sinfully ugly_, whispered the old ladies sitting outside the chapel—it was small wonder that she didn't want to be painted. No matter how she had originally felt about her appearance, growing up continually shunned as grotesquely devilish had done nothing for any vestiges of self-worth. Thou-Shalt-Repent-For-Thy-Sins was really rather intelligent. She loved reading books on mathematics and healing, especially ones declared sinful. She felt a kind of solidarity with sinning; it made her remember that not all sinners were horrible.

She placed her hands in her lap, letting the gloves cover up the scars, and let Chastity get to work while she thought. She forced her legs still but wriggled her toes vigorously. The order to get a portrait of every unmarried person was unusual and could only have come from the Sun King, their new conqueror. It had happened just in the spring, and it had been—well, she hated the crassness and sweetness of the phrase, but it fit—a blessing. No-one was required to go to church anymore or celebrate any holidays or pray, at all.

Thou-Shalt-Repent-For-Thy-Sins had been so relieved at being able to skip church (where she was singled out implicitly if not explicitly) that she had, in a fit of grateful capriciousness, gone to the service at the Temple of the Sun. It had been quite a change—no talk of hell nor of any devils or demons, no images of hellfire and red-hot needles, no screams of righteous rage and calls to confess and repent, no crying children, no demands to worship thy savior, no invocation to drink the blood and eat the flesh of their god.

In fact, it had begun silently, with a watching of the sunrise. After the sun was risen, the gathered peoples hummed softly for a while, then rose to sing praises in a language that sounded both harsh and melodious. The priestesses (what a shock _that_ was) then guided the peoples into a sunlit breakfast, where they blessed the food the priests had cooked and shared it with the congregation. All throughout the feast (so much fruit! So much fresh meat!), the holy peoples had smiled and chatted to all, newcomers and regulars alike.

Thou-Shalt-Repent-For-Thy-Sins was so taken, she vowed to learn the language of the hymns. She was also deeply fascinated by the other differences: clothing, gestures, a friendlier atmosphere. One of the younger priestesses even told her her hair was beautiful in the sun, something that shocked Thou-Shalt-Repent-For-Thy-Sins.

Hair that was considered to be the best was short, coarse, and dark (but not lustfully black like Satan in the night). Hers was finer and fell into pale ringlets that glowed gold in the sun. Gold was evil—it was the mark of the devil and useless besides. She used to wrap it under black wool, but even that didn't stop the shame and pity that came along with the devil's hair. Her eyes were equally demonic: pale gray, like stormclouds. The ministers had proclaimed, when she was quite young and not yet wearing the gauntlet, that her coloring and strangeness could only have come from her mother lying with an incubus. Her father, poor animal-shepherd, was humiliated by the continual whispers that he was secretly a eunuch, or weak and timid. _A wife don't turn if she got what she needs at home,_ tutted the matronly gaggles of graying women. She used to think, spitefully, they were simply jealous, that demons probably were better in bed than they would ever be.

That theory was untestable for the moment, but it was uncomfortably true that her father, Prudence Good, was weak. He was weak to the pressures of the church, weak to the rumors of the town, weak to what others said about his daughter, whom he should have (by almost all systems of morality, and practically all that called compassion a virtue) protected and cherished. He did not. Thou-Shalt-Repent-For-Thy-Sins was left in every way but a roof, basic clothes, and simple food, alone. Cats got more love than she did.

The few times her father drank enough bad wine to work past his pusillanimous nature and come to her in the night, drunkenly slurring that he'd buy fine meat and the best dresses anyone could have, were worse than the silence and avoidance. As if slurring out the virtues of good food that was wholly imaginary made up for being an awful parent. She hated him when he bought her fine dresses with floating petticoats and ruffled sleeves, but she wore them anyway. If she was to be the living embodiment of Lust, then she felt she ought to inspire it. It was her birthright.

She was, in fact, not really attached to any sort of family. The church declared her mother a whore to demons and her a living embodiment of the sin of Lust, so she had little choice but to scorn them. The townspeople were her tormentors—both the ones that chased after and threw rocks, the ones that giggled and whispered behind their hands, the ones that flinched at the sight of a few locks in the sun, and the ones that said nothing and pretended their hands were unstained.

Thou-Shalt-Repent-For-Thy-Sins sat in the dim studio for a long time, only rising when she realized it must have been dark out. Her house—it was in no way a home—was through marsh grass, and there were snakes after dark. Her boots were thick but nowhere near enough, and her feet were unbalanced at the best of times. (Her spine had twisted inwards on itself sometime around the start of adolescence, and had raised her right hip above the left; this made what little balance she'd had before become even more irrelevant.) She hesitated—why, she couldn't sleep in the art room, could she? No—no need to impose the ruthless interrogation and subsequent mocking on Chastity.

"Look, I'll take the portraits with me." He looked up. "To the temple, right?"

"Um. Yeah. Look, are you sure?" It was sweet like the deathly stench of a rotting duck, the way he cared about the little things and blushingly avoided the large ones.

"Quite." The path to the temple was illuminated at night by a series of candles encased in glass. They were mesmerizing to watch. Besides, the temple would probably let her sleep there, at least on the steps.


End file.
